Swimming Tips for Beginners

1. Learn to keep your goggles over your eyes for at least an hour without removing. Aswimming workoutoften includes a warm up, a main set, then kick or pull and finishing with a warm down. After each set, they tend to put their goggles on their forehead and reset their goggles on the next set. A long distance race does not allow for this luxury. Get used to keeping your goggles on. .....

Practice Sighting

2. In order to increase your ability to sight in an open water race or triathlon,practice sightingin the pool. On every fourth lap, throw in a few sightings while swimming across the pool. Look up two to three times and try to keep a streamlined position by not dropping your hips and legs. Attempt to look up in one smooth motion within your arm cycle. If you want feedback on technique, ask your coach or lane mates to check out your sighting techniqu .....

Practice Pulling Straight Back

3. As your hands enter the water, your fingertips (with a flat palm) should immediately begin pointing straight down. Focus on pulling straight back as you roll your shoulder or take a breath. Your hands should not cross over your center line at any point in the stroke. .....

Purchase Fins

4. If you have a cross over kick, purchase a pair of fins and focus on kicking efficiently without crossing one foot over the other. Fins will also help increase your ankle flexibility. .....

Purchase a Swimmers Snorkel

5. When practicing with a swimmers snorkel, you can concentrate on your arm stroke and body rotation more easily. Competitive swimmers use this type of equipment all the time. So should you. .....

get help from a swimming buddy

6. If you know a competent swimmer you trust, it will help a lot to have them in the water with you. We call them a swimming buddy.Having a buddy in the water with you is reassuring. They can remind you of what you need to be doing and they can point out where you are making good progress with your stroke technique. They can also hold you in specific positions whilst you get a feel for them.We have written an article for freestyle swimmers who want .....

develop a feel for the water

7. Water is an alien environment to us; something were not used to. Start off by simply learning how your body moves and feels in the water ? its so important. At first you dont even need to try and float.Stand in the shallow end with your hands in the water and start to move your hands and arms around gently. Think about using your hands like paddles. Push against the water and feel the pressure on your palms this is the beginning of something ca .....

blow bubbles

8. Not many people know this, but the most important skill in freestyle is to be able to exhale freely into the water. Most people instinctively hold their breath when their face is in the water. This will make the stroke much tougher. When you are swimming freestyle all exhalation should be into the water, so when you turn your head to breathe you only need to inhale. This is the secret of breathing in freestyle.Holding your breath adds to feelings .....

break things down into manageable chunks

9. Attempting to perform the full freestyle stroke without any preparation is a recipe for failure. The key to learning the stroke is to break things down into small manageable chunks.In swimming coaching we do something called drills. A drill is an exercise that allows you to practise one part of swimming technique without the difficulty of doing it all at once. Drills sometimes exaggerate a movement so that you can get a feel for it. Here are some .....

use fins

10. We recommend you invest in some swimming flippers (called fins in swimming). These are smaller and more flexible than scuba diving flippers. If you are buying fins, we recommend you get something mid length and floppy, like these Finis Floating Fins.Many of the fundamentals of freestyle swimming can be learnt more effectively with a little bit of extra propulsion from wearing fins. Use the fins to perform some of the drills and techniques we outl .....